Sacred Geometry in Art History

Sacred Geometry in Art History

Hexagonal grids used in paintings. Drawing the grid with a compass, the first two points determine the entire grid. Because the grid is inherently three-dimensional, it works as a sort of perspective.
Heraclitus: The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.
The Painter’s Secret Geometry 117:
In the Middle Ages the ‘geometry’ of a work of art, whether picture, bas-relief or page of manuscript, consisted chiefly in the use of the regular polygons as an armature, as an interior framework, figures that were sometimes quite complicated, with five, six, or eight sides, not forgetting the double figures formed by the star pentagons and hexagons.
…In spite of its strictness, geometry as understood in the Middle Ages was no hindrance to the imagination.
P 155:

[T]he abandonment of the old constraints brings with it a certain
P 95: Many painters have used geometrical diagrams: in the work of some of them the result has been a monotonous symmetry, but others have striven to hide the guiding points under an appearance of anecdotal spontaneity.
Painter’s Secret Geometry 211: quoting David Sutter, La philosophie des Beaux-Arts applique a la peinture
‘Plutarch says: In the arts nothing that is done well is done by chance, and I know no work of art that has succeeded except through the foresight and science of the artist. They all constantly use rules, lines, measures, numbers.’
Albrecht Durer:
Considering, however, that this is the true foundation for all painting, I have proposed myself to propound the elements for the use of all eager students of Art, and to instruct them how they may employ a system of Measurement with Rule and Compass, and thereby learn to recognize the real Truth, seeing it before their eyes.
Charles Blanc, quoting Ingres in Ingres, sa vie et ses ouvrages Paris 1870:
“I began from the background, with the architecture. Once the lines were marked out, I called all my figures, one by one, and they came obediently to take their places in the “

By |June 6th, 2015|Art History|Comments Off on Sacred Geometry in Art History